A Different Kind of Deadly (19 page)

Leo stuffed his hands in his pockets,
wondering what got him in the mood to lecture.

"I guess... the point I'm trying to make here
is that yeah, you've actually gone through Hell. But that doesn't
mean he didn't have his own demons to contend with. I can tell you
that there is nothing Marvin wouldn't do to take back what he put
you through."

"There's nothing he
can
do," Will said
glumly. "It's already happened."

"Bingo. He's a wuss. You're a Demon-Doll, and
killing him won't change any of it." Leo raised his hand, seeing
the start of a retort. "I'm not trying to convince you not to kill
him -I won't let you, anyway. I'm just pointing out that all the
hurt you've gone through isn't going to change once you get to him.
Personally, I think you're smart for changing your target to that
Koronos guy; hurting people is what gets him off. Marvin hurt you
horribly, but I can tell you for a fact that he didn't mean to, and
that he will never, ever hurt anyone again for the rest of his
life."

Will snorted, shaking his head.

He'd pegged Leo for an imbecile, yet even
clowns had their moments of brilliance. Years of boiling rage were
now at a low simmer with just a few minutes of conversation. Did
Leo stop him from hating Marvin? No. Will recognized that his scars
were too deep to let the sin slide... but at least now he could
understand where the necromancer was coming from.

It was pointless to compare which one of them
had the harder life or more traumatizing experiences, so Will
wasn't going to bother, but it was evident that Marvin had suffered
the consequences of his actions for years. While it would never
sate Will's thirst for vengeance, the knowledge did much to appease
it.

25: Balancing Act

I
sank to the ground
with renewed
appreciation for solid rock. Hours of navigating a narrow platform
had officially rendered my knees useless. I had yet to feel any
real pain in my muscles, but they were tingling from
strain.

A nap didn't seem like a bad idea; if
Will was going to kill me then I'd rather die in my sleep after
all.

"Marvin, get up!" Diana yelled at me,
promptly dragging me off the floor. She was so short I could see
right over her head, and spotted what had her so
alarmed.

Will dropped down from a plateau's
edge. He shot me a dirty look, his eyes the same shade of lime I
saw in Koronos. But rather than attack, as I expected him to do,
Will raised his open palms in the air, showing that he was
unarmed.

Of course, having seen him fight in
the Harpy Den, I knew that he didn't need a weapon to be deadly,
but the symbolism of the gesture was not lost on us. Diana squinted
skyward, where Leo was sitting on the edge of the drop, polishing
off the last of his rations.

"You've got some explaining to do,"
she growled.

Leo pumped a fist against his chest
and let out a loud belch.

"'
Scuse
me," he apologized, clearing
his throat. "I'm Will's Contractor now."

"EH?" I balked. I looked from Will, to
Leo, and back again. A side-stepped glance at Diana allowed me to
catch her expression at the news.

Her eyebrow twitched
furiously.

"Leo isn't a complete fool," she
admitted, making long strides towards her fellow Doll. "But he
isn't capable of forcing you to submit to him. What are you
after?"

Diana seemed to be the only one in our
group who Will wasn't openly irritated by. He offered her a
respectful nod of his head.

"Marvin is small fry compared to
Koronos."

"You'd attack your own
master?"

"Former master," Will stressed. "While
I'd love to see both dead, I'd choose Koronos every
time."

Diana released a sigh of relief. While
she couldn't trust most motives, she had more than enough faith in
a solid grudge. Koronos was a pox in the Moor of Souls, and she was
glad for any ally who shared in that opinion.

Leo hopped down and joined me off to
the side. Tully leapt from his head to mine, nuzzling my hair as a
way of greeting.

"The bright side is that Will won't be
after you anymore."

"What makes you so sure?"

"I said I'd kill myself if he goes
near you." I gaped at Leo, who shrugged at the comment. "What? I
trust you'll bring me back, right? I get a second chance at life,
but he doesn't. It's all good."

"Leo, you threatened him with
suicide?"

"That's what I just said." He punched
me on the arm. "Don't think too hard on it. You don't have to worry
about that three days crap anymore and that's all that
matters."

Diana and Will continued their
discussion. Leo and I sat on the ground to recuperate as the only
mortal members of the group. I caught snippets of conversation,
mostly directions, dealing with our next steps.

At one point Diana looked over at us.
Her eyes lingered on me before her face twisted and she snapped
away again. This didn't go unnoticed by Leo, who eyed me a
question.

"So what happened between you and the
banshee?"

"I told her I was in love with
her."

Leo choked on his water. He grinned
incredulously.

"So your balls finally dropped,
eh!"

I kicked his leg.

"Could you get any louder,
Leo?"

"Of course I can! Watc-"

I clamped my hand over his
mouth.

"Sarcasm, Leo," I said to his ear.
"That was sarcasm."

He cackled like the irritating asshole
he was, and I sat back on the dirt, unable to decide whether I
liked the stench of sweat and smoke better than the decay I was so
accustomed to.

"Koronos has got to be plotting
something."

"He's a devil, Marv -plotting is kinda
his shtick."

"But what?" I demanded, raking my
hands through my greasy hair. "We're so close to the Eyes, Leo. The
issue with Will was settled too easily; he's got to have something
else up his sleeve."

"You're making the mistake of assuming
he wants the Eyes," Will said as he approached us. I shared an
uncomfortable glance with him before breaking it off a second
later. He remained standing, and I felt myself shrinking the longer
he looked down on us. "He's after you, Marvin. The Ouroboros
guarantees that you're his no matter what."

"Are devils immortal?" Leo
asked.

"Some. I don't think Koronos is
powerful enough to live forever, though," Will admitted.

The notion that there were devils
stronger than Koronos was a sobering revelation.

"He's definitely strong enough to live
a few more centuries if he's already lasted this long," he
continued. "But don't think you're in the clear because he has time
on his side. Demons are notorious for their vices; Koronos is more
impatient than you think."

"Which is why we're all moving
together from here on out," Diana interjected, holding the map in
her hands. "The Eyes are right above us. Will is going to carry
Leo. I'll take Marvin."

"And Uhh?" I asked, looking at my
golem leisurely making his way to us. "What about him?"

"He can climb on his own."

Without saying much of anything, Diana
picked me up on her back. Will did the same for Leo. As silly as
I'd felt being lugged around by a petite woman, Leo's hulking frame
looked positively ridiculous when set against Will's.

Regardless, I counted my blessings that these
were Dolls, and possessed of superhuman strength. I'd much rather
suffer the indignity of being luggage than having to climb above a
pit of boiling lava on my own measly merits. Knowing me, I'd just
end up as an ingredient in some primordial stew.

Just like that, Will and Diana pounded their
fists into the rock walls when they couldn't find suitable holds. I
closed my eyes, reluctant to look down at the growing distance, or
up at the nearing stalactites looming above our heads like the
nails of an iron maiden.

The world rumbled, and though the Dolls didn't
have beating hearts, I'm sure that whatever served as a substitute
as a pulse stopped with my mortal one. The Salamander Nest was
always trembling to an extent, but what I'd taken for the presence
of magic was actually the movement of earth.

This wasn't just a hotbed beneath the Howling
Desert -it was a volcano.

Leo's tan features grew pale as he shared my
conclusion. I started to notice imprints against the rock; fossils
from an ancient explosion. Now I was determined to get the Eyes so
I could get the Hell out of here.

We climbed for the better part of an hour
before reaching our destination. The peak of the Salamander Nest
was a disc approximately thirty feet across in every
direction.

At the heart of this platform was a hole,
fuming with thick white smoke. It was in that smoke that I saw the
glint of gems, hovering on the pressurized air.

"Those are the Eyes?" Leo asked with the
measure of disappointment that everyone felt. After all the trouble
it took to get here, the object of our quest was an unimpressive
sight indeed.

"Whatever," said Diana, preparing
for a running jump. "Let's get the Eyes and get ourselves back to
Purilo's."

She charged towards the geyser and grasped the
Eyes in the palm of her hand. We ran around the hole to see her
safely on the other side.

I approached her, eager to get a better look
at the artifact set. Diana dropped the gems into my hands so I
could study them to my leisure.

They were unlike any stones I'd seen in my
entire life, and considering Nethermount was just one giant mining
cavern, that was a bold claim indeed.

The Eyes of the Leviathan didn't even look
solid. It was as though I were holding two perfect spheres of water
with bright red oil in the center, and yet they felt as hard and
cold as ice -a fact made a thousand times more impressive
considering the environment we found them in. I couldn't tell
whether it was their temperature or the magic within them that
caused my fingers to go numb, but they were special -there was no
doubt about it.

All of us felt a chill in the air at that
moment, and we watched as Koronos, clad in his human guise, stepped
out from the steam vent to stand before us. He clapped politely at
our successful venture, inhaled deeply as though the scent of
molten rock was the most refreshing thing in the world, and
smiled.

"Did you know that the acid pools found
throughout the Moor also run through the Salamander Nest?" he asked
us. "The lava covers the vast majority, but you can see come oozing
in the cavern walls, I believe."

We looked around at pockets of green slime
plopping into the flames like broken waterfalls.

"What are you trying to go, Koronos?" Diana
demanded. Experience was the only thing staying her hands at this
time; this was not the place to fight him, and she would lose even
if it were.

"Trying to do?" he asked
innocently. "In such a scenic destination, all I wish is to impart
some knowledge so you can better
appreciate
this
setting."

The demon clasped his hands behind his back,
strolling along the edge.

"The gas that this acid produces has
pressurized this environment, you see. It's exquisitely hazardous.
The Salamander Nest has been teetering on the edge of eruption for
decades because of this tenuous balance."

We tensed. I didn't like where this
conversation was going. Koronos noticed our physical response and
mustered up his most reassuring laugh.

Needless to say, it made matters
worse.

"Don't be so concerned, my friends!" he
grinned. "The only way to get a volcano to erupt would be to flood
this cavern with water! Or suddenly change the pressure, but for
that you'd need some very dense gas, almost to the point of being
solid."

We watched as his hand grew to its demonic
size, tearing straight through its mortal flesh in the process. In
a split second, it had become large enough to grasp a small dog in
its entirety.